"What happened to Merrick Garland was a disgrace. His nomination was the Democratic equivalent of Kavanaugh’s. Garland, too, is brilliant, admired, experienced, sober and humane. Indeed, Kavanaugh himself called Garland 'supremely qualified' for the Supreme Court. That he made this statement while Garland’s nomination was pending—and was the subject of intense partisan warfare—says a great deal about Kavanaugh’s character."

It is time for a little horse-trading to restore the American institutions Trump and his appointees have labored to denigrate, degrade or trash.

Democrats might wisely renounce their opposition to Trump's nominee in exchange for the following quid pro quo:

Kavanaugh would publicly re-state his measured judgment that Merrick Garland is "supremely qualified" to serve on the High Court while also noting that Mitch McConnell's refusal to advance Garland's confirmation illustrates the vindictive, partisan behavior that is destroying faith in American institutions, thus tearing the country apart. Republicans will get the power they crave.

"Where love rules, there is no will to power,

and where power predominates, love is lacking.

The one is the shadow of the other."

Carl Jung

This Jung quote is companion piece to the following observation by Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, the living American who has served longest as a White House senior staff adviser:“The Republican philosophy might be summarized thus: To hell with principle; what matters is power, and that we have it, and that they do not.”“Where the Right Went Wrong"

Despite another expansion of the GOP's self-corrupting power - an eventuality that is already baked in the cake - Kavanaugh and the Democrats will have made common cause to restore a much needed measure of collaborative civility, simultaneusly establishing the transcendent importance of Truth which has become an object of scorn "on the right side of the aisle."